In the forty years since the late 1960s and the early 1970s till the 2010s, the Japanese intellectual world was dominated by contemporary European thought (in particular, contemporary French thought). Its boom was of a scale likely not seen in other countries; however, this intellectual tendency, including deconstructionism, was generally named “postmodernism” as a new academic fashion, firstly in the United States. This book is the first of its kind, at least in Japanese, Chinese, and English, to systematically attempt to historicise the influence of “postmodern” thought upon modern Japanese intellectuals. It carefully examines the strengths and weaknesses of this development by considering both the significance of the popularity of this new strain of intellectual thought in Japan as well as the Japanese political and intellectual context in which this thought emerged. In other words, this book attempts to see the influence of contemporary French thought in Japan’s own historical context. At the same time, this book attempts to position this new intellectual tendency in a global context and especially positions it within an East Asian perspective, which has been neglected from the author’s point of view.

14479287309603. This book consists of three parts and nine chapters, including an introductory chapter and a concluding chapter. Part I first overviews and analyses its changes from the perspective of postwar Japanese intellectual history as well as the post-war history of Japanese political thought represented by Maruyama Masao (丸山眞男, 1914-1996), the most influential political philosopher in postwar Japan. In contrast with the postwar Japanese thought aiming at establishing postwar constitutional democracy and reflecting on Japan’s modern history, in particular its invasion war in World War II, this book argues that there are both continuities and discontinuities between the postwar thought and contemporary thought in Japan regarding their attitudes toward its history and postwar responsibilities. Part I also argues that postmodern thought contributed to the emergence of two different intellectual tendencies over the past forty years. On the one hand, new political and philosophical theory has brought about a turn for critical intellectuals to achieve historicity in the Japanese intellectual and political context. Through gaining a fresh theory to critically face the issue of wartime crimes, their imagination of Asia, etc., this tendency represents a localisation of new Western thoughts in a modern Japanese context. On the other hand, this book also sees the emergence of postmodernism in Japan as an opportunity for the younger intellectual generation to escape from their “hot history” into a “cold structure.” This part also deals with the essential roles of cultural anthropology in this new intellectual tendency, which deeply matters to Japanese intellectuals’ skepticism towards orthodox Marxism and some theoretical limits seen in their modernist thinkers. Part II deals with the different Japanese receptions of Francis Fukuyama’s discourse of “the end of history” and the Japanese receptions of Russian-French philosopher Alexandre Kojéve (1902-1968)’s interpretation of Hegel, which Fukuyama heavily relies on. This part also shows a postwar genealogy of interpretations of Kantian peace theory in postwar Japan, concentrating on the relationship between Marxism and repentance for/rejection of war, pacifism, and the influence of Kantian peace theory. Part III focuses on the political thought of Kōjin Karatani (柄谷 行人, b. 1941), a contemporary representative Japanese philosopher and the flag-bearer of postmodern philosophy in Japan, and analyses his thought from a perspective of comparative philosophy, in particular, from the standpoint of Chinese thought.

The concluding chapter concludes that postmodernism in the Japanese context can be considered part of Japan’s abnormally long-lasting postwar period. Once again, it evaluates the continuities and new critical developments to face its “hot history” between modern and critical postmodern thought in Japan on the one hand. On the other hand, it pays attention to the mainstream Japanese intellectuals’ more and more weakening of the positioning of East Asia in this new academic tendency. It also analyses the interactive relations between Japanese intellectuals’ imaginations of “East Asia”, “West Europe” and “the United States” by connecting the shift of Japanese Sinology and the influence of postmodern tendency.